Anyone return to trucking after working in healthcare?

I was working OTR back in '06, then ran into a co-worker who told me about the overseas KBR work. I did that for 3 years and felt relatively rich for a truck driver. When I came back stateside I had all these grand plans to go into healthcare (as a career change for my elderly years).

The problem is (at least as other people see it) that I took a very leisurely route since I had so much savings. I took all the nursing prerequisites one at a time so I could get good grades. Then I made it into RN school, but crapped out after just one semester. It was just too much studying and reading all day and doing clinicals in a nursing home in the mornings. I pretty much collapsed under the pressure.

About six months ago I was going to go back to trucking. My old company said they would hire me and everything. But right before I committed, a friend told me about sleep tech (RPSGT) and I thought OK maybe I can do that healthcare career. It's mostly a self-study thing and I got the first very limited certification CPSGT. But now I'm having serious doubts if I can start another career from scratch and deal with co-workers and all that again.

I made the mistake of pursuing the sleep tech thing long enough to where now I haven't worked as a truck driver for over 5 years. So now my old company said I would have to go back to truck driving school and start with a trainer, etc. I'm willing to do all that but I'm going crazy because I can't decide. Has anyone been in the same situation and what did you do?

The solitary part of trucking I like. I'm not a very social person and I don't mind being by myself. But also back then I usually had very long trips, so it was kind of relaxing. I guess with the economy down, I hear most of the trips are shorter. So I would guess you are in and out of shippers/receivers every day and it's a lot more stressful. I feel like an idiot, but I had made so much money overseas that I just took it easy for over 5 years. Now all that money is run out and I need to get my act together. Sorry to drone on so much but I'm really at my wits end and getting more and more depressed. Thank you in advance for any advice or tips.

 

Thanks for the reply. It's been so long since I drove OTR (I don't really count the overseas years because it's so different) that I forgot why I wanted to get out of it. What I do remember is I like saving money by not having an apartment, cable bill, utilities and all that. I never even had a cell phone. But now I think I will need to at least get GPS, not sure. Part of the reason I'm afraid to go into the polysomnography field is that it seems like a lot of the scoring will be taken over by computers and home testing. Whereas, I don't see trucking ever disappearing (at least for several decades).

 

Sounds good. I remember I got some of the best sleep ever when I was a trucker - something so comforting about the sleeper. I used to just get up and drive straight through, sometimes my full 10 hours or more. Now I'm scared as hell because of all the news reports that even sitting for 2 hours is supposedly deadly. What do you guys do to stay fit while you are actually driving 5,6,7 or more hours straight? Thanks

 

Do paramedics make good money? Another big factor convincing me to go back to trucking is I still had a better income trucking in the 90's than I would working as an RPSGT or even an RN. Of course with the economy down now, I guess the income for trucking has gone down too.